‘That can’t be, lad,’ said the man, and there was an edge of danger to his voice now. Michael dragged his eyes away from the mess on the carpet and looked up. The man was a creature of black and grey shadows, the light from the single lamp winking out of his dull false eye. ‘You’ve done well, but you’ve got to bloody listen to me now, right? Every word, you pay attention now, and learn something. Right?’

In the end, they gave her heart to Fiddler’s Wood. The rest of her they loaded into the man’s battered old van, and they drove a long way, the hot, sweet smell of her flooding the cab and making the man grimace. Eventually, when they had found a good, remote place, they took her out of the van and placed her in the grass. By that time, the sky in the east was turning a burnished silver colour, and the man was eager to be gone.

‘A lot of tidying up to be done, lad, and don’t think you’ll be getting out of that. It’s important you learn it. A proper good clean will save your neck.’

Michael ignored him for the moment. The woman in the grass looked oddly serene, her eyes turned up to the brightening sky, everything below her collar bone a churned butcher-shop mess. He knew why she looked so peaceful: because her heart was in the cold, black dirt, deep in the roots of the ancient wood. With a single gloved finger, he drew a heart in her blood on one of the few patches of her skin that wasn’t ruined.

‘A heart for a heart,’ he said.

And her coat. Her coat, which had been so white before, was a deep and sopping red. He smiled at that, drinking in the sight, before getting back into the van.

19